As Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Help do torrid business, the dog days of August are now upon us. This is the traditional dumping ground for movies that Hollywood deems neither robust enough to compete in the summer fray nor able to earn quality reviews during the more demanding adult fall season.

Which means that remakes of Fright Night, starring vampire Colin Farrell, and Conan the Barbarian, starring Game of Thrones he-man Jason Momoa, might actually do some business against the likes of Brit Lit romance One Day, starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, which has earned bad advance buzz, and low-budget entries from indie veteran John Sayles (who shot period war film Amigo in The Philippines) and Finnish action helmer Renny Harlin, who shot his hand-held war movie 5 Days of War on location in Tbilisi, Georgia, and improbably cast Andy Garcia as the Georgian president and Entourage‘s Emanuelle Chriqui as a woman on the run from Russian soldiers. Yet another sequel, Robert Rodriguez’s recast Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D, ominously did not screen for critics in advance of its wide opening in Aroma-scope. We’ll update critic rankings (with trailers below) when they post.

Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D, The Weinstein Company, US | Director: Robert Rodriguez; Cast: Jessica Alba, Jeremy Piven and Joel McHale | “A passable shake-up, even if its ‘Aroma-scope’ experiment stinks. Like Ricky Gervais, the Spy Kids franchise could drone on – sorry, go on – forever.” –James Mottram, Total Film | Tomatometer, Metacritic.

5 Days of War, Anchor Bay, US | Director: Renny Harlin; Cast: Rupert Friend, Val Kilmer, Andy Garcia, Dean Cain, Emmanuelle Chriqui | @akstanwyck tweeted: “Renny Harlin’s 5 Days of War will not mark a comeback for director of Cliffhanger, who’s been toiling in B-movie obscurity for a while now.” | 60% Tomatometer.